Choices
by fc2001
Summary: Don't assume you know where this story is going just yet...
1. Default Chapter

Authors Notes: This is cryptic and short but purposefully so. And don't go jumping to conclusions about the parents just cos they aren't named, I may yet surprise you.   
  
The alarm blinks 6:30 accusingly, and it takes a still bleary mind a moment to focus. It's morning again. My daughter is crying again. Groaning softly, I roll out of bed and pad through to the nursery.   
  
"Sssh, honey, it's early,"  
  
I whisper, leaning into the crib and lifting my baby into my arms. She's not a peaceable baby. She's restless and fidgets even in sleep. I haven't had a decent nights sleep since she was born. Which considering I'm doing this by myself, I think it's a miracle I'm even alive still.  
  
I can't ever regret my decision to have, and to keep, her. I do feel a pang of guilt now and again that she's still with me when I gave up others in my life so willingly. But if I hadn't had Leila, then I wouldn't have had anyone in the world, so I had to keep her. She's beautiful. It's hard to tell who she looks like, as her deep brown eyes could have been inherited from either one of us and other than that she looks just like any other baby.   
  
It's my fault I'm by myself though. I know that starker in these early morning moments than I do when I'm working. It's entirely my fault. The father is thousands of miles away in another time zone entirely, and clueless. I ran away, not him, so I have no right to be bitter towards him.  
  
Did he ever try and find me? He claimed he loved me, enough to follow me? I doubt it, but I'd like to know he tried. It would be some solace in this lonely life. 


	2. Prologue cont

She made her choice. I had to make mine. I had to move on. She didn't want my forgiveness. She didn't want to be with me. She ran thousands of miles just to prove that point. She chose to leave me behind. I chose to carry on with my life.  
  
I won't pretend she hasn't crossed my mind from time to time in the intervening year. I'd be fool to think I'm over her, because when something is as unresolved as our relationship, there's no chance of it ever truly being over.   
  
But she's in LA now. Healthy and happy, as far as I know. I've met someone else. Laura's a nurse, cute and funny. She's scatty, in fact she's completely mad at times. She's the exact opposite of the last woman I was in love with.   
  
I couldn't spend the rest of my life lonely. Why should I? I was the one wronged, the one betrayed. I was the one who deserved to be happy. And now, though it has taken a while, I am. 


	3. A New Reality

I had been through pregnancy and childbirth before. I knew about the swollen ankles and the cravings, about feeling like a beached whale, getting no sleep because there's just no comfortable position. I knew what all that was like.  
  
It was the fact I'd have to keep this baby. That I couldn't give this one up. That it was a responsibility for the rest of my life, that was about to be real, when technically until now it had only been theoretical. I was terrified. Every day for a week before my due date, I thought about it so hard I cried. I was alone, unemployed, in a strange city. I had no one to help, no one to hold my hand.  
  
When I felt the first band of pain tighten around my stomach, I wished this had all been a dream. I prayed it wasn't actually happening. When the pains carried on, and failed to cease, I finally called a cab to get me to the hospital. I wanted someone there. I needed someone there. But I had no one and that was altogether my own fault.   
  
The cab driver looked terrified, as if I'd deliver in his cab at any moment, despite my reassurances that it was OK, I was a doctor and I had ages to go yet. The OB staff at the hospital were all generically reassuring. I knew the meaning of everything that they said, which made the whole labour worse. With Michael, I just wanted it over, so things could go back to normal. This time, this baby was going to change my life and knowing just how close that was was enough to make me feel sick.  
  
Leila came relatively easily. Labour is always relative though isn't it? Relative to hell, that is. I've seen women go through labours twice the length of mine, and thanked God he'd seen fit not to punish me that much. I was exhausted nonetheless when they placed her on my stomach for the first time.  
  
All I wanted, looking down at my tiny baby daughter, was to look up into a pair of adoring eyes and know that another person loved this child as much as I did, that they wanted her much as they wanted me. To know someone else was there to share in that moment, the unconfined joy and relief of having safely brought a healthy child into the world. There are not words for it. I needed to see it in someone else, but I looked up and only saw the OB nurse hovering over me.  
  
Leila, not that she had her name then, was quiet and wriggling. She was beautiful. I was actually overwhelmed, and very glad I decided not to give her up as well. I didn't have to wonder who her father was anymore either. She was not mixed race, in the sense that Michael had been. She had olive skin, under all the angry pink of newborns, and when she finally opened her eyes and looked at her mother, they were his eyes. Not the right colour at this early age, but definitely his eyes. 


	4. Opposites

I spent the 6 months after she left missing her. I couldn't miss her forever though. She haunted my waking moments. I kept hearing her, and turning round and expecting her to be there.  
  
I was broken by her departure. I can't hide that fact. She had run away from me, from everyone in Chicago who had cared about her, and she hadn't even said goodbye.   
  
I wondered every day why she had taken such a dramatic course of action. I knew she'd cheated me. I knew that went against everything she was raised to believe in. Surely, that wasn't enough to make her leave. Here, she had a life. She had a job. She had friends. Surely that should have been enough to make her stay. What did she have anywhere else?   
  
The reality that she wasn't coming back sunk in very slowly. I returned to normal, life carried on. And just as I did, as I was beginning to feel again, Laura started at work.  
  
I will admit she was difficult to take your eyes off. The honey blonde hair, clear blue eyes and figure to die for were an attractive and potent combination. Of course, I was interested in her.   
  
She made it pretty clear she was interested in me too. She began to a military, strategic campaign of flirting. And slowly but surely, she wore me down. My defences not being what they once were.  
  
She was the antithesis of my lover before her. She was bubbly, she was loud, she was energetic, she was uncomplicated. She was light where formerly I'd had dark. I needed that. I needed her.  
  
By the time we kissed, my attention was fully on her. My feelings were for her. She'd turned me around at a time I'd needed it most. I didn't get into the relationship for the sake of it, I genuinely did feel for her. I loved her. Whether she believes it or not. 


	5. Last Call

"Last call, American Airlines Flight 435 to LAX, boarding through gate 6,"  
  
It barely registered that she was announcing my flight. Eyes still flitted up and down the airport concourse, as I reached down to grab my hand luggage from my feet. How could I have still been foolish enough to think either of them would come? After all I did to them both, why would they try to stop me leaving?   
  
My feet felt leaden as I shuffled towards the departure gate, ticket and boarding card in hand. People bustled past me, desperate to get where they were going. I was not that desperate to leave, but I had to. There was no way Chicago could ever be my home again.   
  
There was no job offer in LA. I told Kerry that because it was easier. I didn't know what was in LA for me, but I always liked it when we visited it during my childhood. I always saw myself living in one of those massive, gleaming white mansions in Hollywood or Beverley Hills.   
  
There was an old friend from medical school, who had agreed to let me sleep on her floor until I got myself my own place though. She didn't know why I was moving. I would tell her, but it's not the sort of thing you break over the phone exactly.   
  
With an absent mind, I handed over my boarding card and was greeted on board the plane by a vacuous smile from a vapid blonde. With difficulty, I hoisted my luggage into the overhead locker and slid into my seat.   
  
As the plane taxied away from the terminal, I looked back and fancied I saw a familiar face in the crowd rushing along the walkways. I scolded myself for a childish fantasy, and turned my head away from the window, instead resting my cheek on the cold pane and awaiting take-off.   
  
I had never been a massive fan of flying. I know that this flight carries extra risks for me, with my being pregnant and all. But as a doctor, I was also aware that it's safe enough to fly once you're through your first trimester, and mine ended over a week ago.   
  
I was three months pregnant then, and so far I hadn't thought about this baby once. I had never thought of it as another life. It was just a reason to leave, a guilty weight low in my stomach. It was just the ultimate betrayal for two men I know loved me. 


	6. Running

A heat haze surrounded the distinctive silver plane, and made it merely a blur disappearing to the horizon. And I could have screamed at it to come back, but it wouldn't have.   
  
It was the plane that was carrying her out my life. Don't ask me how I knew that, but the sense of doom had to come from somewhere.   
  
I was breathing so hard I had to double over. I had run all the way there, in the vain hope I might have been in time to stop her leaving.   
  
If she thought I didn't know there was no job in LA, then she was wrong. She wasn't leaving because prospects were better for her elsewhere, because that was simply not true. She was a bright and ambitious woman, at the top of her game and going places and her prospects were better nowhere than in Chicago.   
  
She was running away. I couldn't pretend she hadn't hurt me, but some people are worth the pain. She didn't think she was. But she was wrong, and I had to tell her that. I had to tell her that no matter what she'd done I loved her.   
  
But she clearly didn't want to hear that. She didn't want to be forgiven. 


	7. It's Over

"We can't do this anymore. I can't see you again,"  
I began, pretending to myself that this was just another break up. That all I needed to say were a few of the usual empty platitudes, and it would all end.  
"Where has this come from?"  
He regarded me suspiciously, in that way he had that made me fear he could see everything I was thinking. "I...I've met someone else."  
"So?"  
"Someone I care about. Someone I want to be with,"  
That stung him. I saw that. And who cared that it was a lie? That actually the day beforehand I had split up with the very person I was referring to, using him as an excuse in that instance.  
"All this time, you've just been stringing me along. Comfort till something better comes along,"  
He sounded hurt. What the hell did I expect? All he said had been true, and that made me feel such a horrible person. Now I was severing ties because I had to run. Things had become too complicated, and I had to run away.  
"Don't...that's not fair,"  
My expression was, I knew, fixed and cold. I had to keep my distance. It made breaking my heart easier. "What else was this? You used me..."  
"About as much as I was used..."  
I fired back, attempting self-righteous, achieving pathetic and defensive.  
"So what were we? What would you call it? An arrangement?"  
The word cut cold into my heart, sounding so empty, so hollow. It was. What we had had was hollow, was empty.  
"If you like. Mutually beneficial, but not exclusive,"  
I could see he was getting wound up.  
"Some sort of business deal? What the hell way is that to deal with other people?"  
"Hurt or get hurt,"  
My retort was immature, not to mention slightly sad.  
"Were you always this cold? You've been...its low, even for me, what you've done is low,"  
Did he think I didn't already know that? Did he think he was hurting me with this? I couldn't hurt any more than I already did.  
"You were hardly an innocent party,"  
"I was at your beck and call. Do you want to know why? Do you even care?"  
"I thought it suited you. No ties and all,"  
"Shows what you know. No ties, that's a joke,"  
"It was working,"  
I tried to insist, knowing I was losing. Knowing he was trying to make me stay.  
"No, no it wasn't. Physically, yes, it was great. Mentally, it was exhausting,"  
"We agreed not to let this fuck us up,"  
The strength of my language shocked me too. What did I expect this would do? Of course it fucked us up. How could this not mess with your head? How did I not see this would end this way?  
"But I have. I've let it get to me,"  
His tone was impassioned and it took all the strength I had not to cave.  
"No. No, I'm not hearing this,"  
"The only reason I got involved was the vain hope you'd change your mind, the only reason I stayed involved was that sex was better than nothing at all, maybe I was wrong,"  
"You were wrong. I'm going to walk away before you say something we both regret,"  
Tears stung the back of my eyes, but I couldn't let him see he'd gotten to me. He couldn't see me cry over him.  
"Like I love you?"  
"Exactly."  
"Walk away. Turn and walk, but its still there. Fuck it, I'm in love with you and if you never saw it you're more blinkered than I thought,"  
I saw it. That's why I had to walk away. I wished I could tell him that, but I couldn't. I walked away not because I didn't want to acknowledge how he felt, but because I was pregnant and I couldn't tell him for sure it was his child.


End file.
